Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Monday August 13, 2007 @12:53PM
from the now-in-frat-boys-basement dept.

morpheus83 writes "Russian news agency Interfax is reporting that thieves have stolen a three-ton meteorite from the yard of the Tunguska Space Event foundation, whose director said it was the part of meteor that caused a massive explosion in Siberia in 1908. The massive three tonne rock was bought to Krasnoyarsk after an 2004 expedition to the site of the so-called Tunguska event- a mysterious mid air explosion over Siberia in 1908 was 1,000 times more powerful than the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. The foundation's director Yury Lavbin claimed to have discovered the wreckage of an alien spacecraft during the expedition."

Look, I know he's Slashdot's favorite whipping boy, but would it be possible to leave Ballmer out of just one discussion!?

Nope. Not Ballmer. My money's on Karl Rove. This rock of kryptonite dissappears and he resigns? Well, isn't that con-VEEEEEEEEEEEn-ient? His reason of "spending more time with my family" rings completely hollow, as one has to have a soul to enjoy family, and according to Wikipedia, Rove sold his in a deal to get a SECOND term for GWB. More likely, he's going to be using it in a plot to taint consumer products to cause tree huggers, gays, strict constitutionalists, and other riff raff to keel over. My spidey senses tell me so.

It takes time to move thousands of tons of rock, even with the best equipment. Especially if you're interested in not causing further cave-in. I mean, we could nuke the mine, and get down to the miners no problem. But their odds of survival would be considerably lower using this strategy.

Also, from another angle, this is news reported from Russia. Russia's news is almost ways completely made-up, or at least mostly made-up. There's a good chance nothing was stolen from anywhere. (Pravda reports UFO sightings as fact frequently.)

I dunno, I remember a Cajun restaurant around the corner had a really cool giant wood alligator sculpture crawling out of the side of the building.

About 15 ft up, It was about 7 to 8ft long and weighed probably near 1000 pounds with the mount. Steel cables attaching it to the building amongst other things.

One Sunday, a few guys showed up with a cherry picker and somehow detached, lowered it and carted it off. More than a few people saw it, but people just assumed they must be ok to cart it off, because who would steal a giant wooden alligator in the middle of the day?

In my university they installed this huge frozen CO2 tank the size of two large trailer trucks. The next day it was gone. The funny thing is that people have seen it in an industrial area, but there's no formal proof that it's the same, so it's there to stay.

It's possible. Heck, in 1968, a master thief and his girlfriend/accomplice stole a 10-ton gold ingot from a moving train! They blew up a bridge going over water when the train approached. The train crashed into the bay, along with the steel container of gold. Using a submarine, they went down and attached balloons to the container to give it lift, and hauled away the gold using the sub. Luckily, the police inspector in charge of moving the gold had the container radioactivated, so they could trace it w

My current understanding of the Tunguska event was that there were still at least three really good potential theories and that they were still researching. Asteroid, meteorite, etc.

Anyway, glad to see the Aliens got their rock back. No tin-foil-hat-wearing clown should own Alien property. If my car parks on an ant hill, the ants suddenly don't own my car. And this guy had no right to "own" that rock. This guy has got to get a clue regarding species relations.

Yeah, I have to call BS on their claim it was part of the big explosion, since it is currently commonly thought that it was an air-burst event which would not leave a 3-ton object behind. If this rock was really from the event, I'm pretty sure the mystery would be solved, which it isn't.

Well, there IS a group that has picked out a "potential crater" that went previously unrecognized that has done some expeditions and drilling in the lake to see if they can establish this for sure.Apparently their idea is a large stony or iron object was the cause of the blast, but part of it made a big divot in the landscape downrange. Because of the nature of the ground, it didn't look like a crater, more like someone sticking a broom handle in the mud. (Cracks and a hole, not ejecta, rim and round hole.) I think the link came from Slashdot or Fark.

But, based on surveys of the rest of the area looking for stony or iron debris have not found much.

So I call "Typical Russian BS" on this as well.

It would be a HUGE discovery to have pegged the event with some physical remains, that's a popular subject amongst science-geeks, conspiracy theorists and Slashdot.

For something to have been sitting in a museum (not studied?!) for three years and not noticed makes this look like insurance fraud more than anything else.

Well, according to Wiki the best guesses for the size of the Tunguska asteroid (if it was one) range from 60m to 1200m in diameter. I remember from some other reading that a 400m diameter, average composition asteroid has a mass of roughly 50 million tons. So a three ton piece of debris doesn't seem all that unreasonable, even if we consider a an order of magnitude smaller diameter.
I'm sure we could find out if the object was really from the Tunguska event, however. I remember the first expeditions

I actually did park my car on an anthill once, accidentally of course. The ants behaved just like humans and acted like they owned it: It took quite a while to get them all out, and they weren't happy about it. So I'd say this is a mistake any species can make.

Depends how fast it is moving. There's been research into using ballistics instead of nuclear because you can do more damage while leaving no fallout. You just have to accelerate something really really fast.

How do you have a 6000 pound rock stolen?It's not like you can stick it in your pocket and walk away, even if you are that Russian boxer dude that killed Apollo Creed......

The foundation's director Yury Lavbin claimed to have discovered the wreckage of an alien spacecraft during the expedition.

And the article goes on to say that it just disappeared. (I'm not clear if it was the spaceship or the rock..... or maybe the rock was the spaceship....) Damn, and we were so close to proving the Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith are real.......

Actually depending on it's density it could be smaller than you think. If it is a rock, say with the density of concrete it would only be 1.48 cubic yards in size.That mean 4.5 ft length on each axis roughly (since it is irregular and all). It is nothing a hoist and a few straps couldn't lift into a suitable truck.

If the density was higher as they say the composition maybe iron, those dimension will be even smaller.

The US military used their stealth helicopter technology (enhanced with alien technology) to airlift the meteor out in the middle of the night. Otherwise, someone would have eventually discovered the alien artifacts embedded deep within the meteor.

Hmm, the PhysOrg story is just a press release by the foundation, there is an official statement in the comments below the story stating "this new theory was announced at the press conference on results of the recent expedition to the crash site. It is not our own conclusion, but theory made by scientists who claim they found some proving evidences. As scientists, we truly believe that even some irrational theories have the right to be announced."

If the Bad Astronomer is not good enough for you, how about articles from Space.com [space.com] and MSNBC [msn.com] which were written in August 2004, when the foundation claimed to have found the alien spacecraft parts. Neither article gives much credence to the claim that the team's claimed dicovery. The foundation said at the time that they would be providing evidence (the recovered "spacecraft parts") but 3 years later they have yet to do so. The Bad Astronomer did not write a lengthy article because any rational being already knows that this foundation is full of shit. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and they have provided none.

Actually, there is some conjecture that the meteorite may have been found, but not obtained. See this BBC science [bbc.co.uk] article; the premise is that Lake Cheko near the center of the region displays an unusual bottom formation with an anomalous feature about 10m down that might be a meteorite fragment. A fair degree of controversy exists, and an expedition is planned in 2008 to drill down to the anomaly to determine whether it is meteoritic in nature, which would settle the question.

To my best knowledge it was never cleared up what exactly caused the accident in the first place..

And now, almost a 100 years later, we suddenly get to hear that they lost a 3 ton meteor (how the hell do you lose a 3 ton rock?) and oh yeah, btw, that was the meteor that caused the incident!....
No worries, we had it lying in our backyard all the time, never felt a urge or saw the reason to let the rest of the world know....

Obviously, Yury didn't bring the alien ship back because he himself is possessed, and the alien-Yury decided it would be much smarter to bring the meteorite back and tell a few oligarchs that it was filled with oil! Yes! So they go and steal it for their own ends, but they'll all get possessed, and the black ooze will be walking in the corridors of Russian power. And all this when there is talk of a new Cold War developing with the West.

Despite prevailing suspicions that a group of mutant little girls whizzed off with the rock to build their Help-the-Town-and-Make-It-a-Better-Place machine, don't forget that meteorite rock is pretty scarce, and can fetch a pretty penny/ounce.

Martian Meteorites have sold for $85k/ounce [spacetoday.org], and this source [redsofts.com] claims $3600/troy ounce for more garden variety space rocks. This is more valuable than gold, platinum, maybe comparable to Rhodium.

So, (3tonnes = 128,602.986troy ounces)*$3600/ounce = $467 Million, just sitting around in your backyard. No chain, or Kryptonite lock, or even post-it note saying "please don't steal." Just asking for trouble from the neighbor kids, they were.

I did. Nothing yet. Chopped up into little ebay sized pieces, that would be a lot of lots of Tunguska meteorite. Perhaps they're hacking it up even now. Though the question would be how would one know it was authentic? I guess it would be one of those things where they provide a 'certificate of authenticity' to guarantee it...

How does a 3-ton rock go missing?You have to understand Russian culture.

The expedition was under pressure from the government to produce its quota of evidence.When they could only find a few kilograms of meteor material, they forged a report stating that they had a 3-ton meteor (step 1). Then they bribed the right inspectors to confirm the existance of said meteor (step 2). Later, they realized that they could purchase property theft insurance from U.S. insurance companies (step 3). They then reported the meteor missing and filed a claim with Travelers (step 4).

I had a really cool Samurai statue that got stolen from my yard. I was sad it was gone, and was really kicking myself for leaving it in the yard. Like me, they shoulda just brought it inside . . . maybe it really didn't go with the interior decor.

I can't be bothered RTFA, but has anyone linked this to prices for metals? Of course it's probably only worth a few roubles, refined...The closest correlate in recent news was the theft [guardian.co.uk] of a bronze sculpture from Henry Moore's estate in London (in reality, priceless; but worth about five million pounds on the art market, worth a few thousand on the metals market. It's been melted down by now, for a certainty).

Metal road signs, street fittings, even fire engine nozzles are being stolen [saskwastereduction.ca] in the UK and US [csoonline.com] for t

According to this [spacedaily.com] article, the meteorite went missing last June, but they only reported it now. HELLO? It's still on Lavbin's desk, right where he left it, but his desk is actually MORE MESSY than mine.

Or - 4. A viral marketing campaign for the soon-to-be-announced "Super Mario Brothers: Meteorite Mania!" game. Unfortunately, Adam and Morgan will only give it 2 1/2 stars, and it will disappear into well-deserved obscurity soon after.